


Motives of the Damnably Involved

by Madeline_Elaine_Dew (lynnotline)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dark, Drugging, Emotional John Watson, Gen, General spoilers for the whole show so far, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock lying to John, as usual, dark themes, just tiny mentioned things that probably don't count, nothing specific, which means up to the end of season three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynnotline/pseuds/Madeline_Elaine_Dew
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock makes an ill-considered decision and those closest to him are drawn into the aftermath. No technical slash, but can be seen anywhere if one tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Motives of the Damnably Involved

** Motives of the Damnably Involved **

Sherlock prodded at the human jaw floating in the beaker another time, added a greenish liquid to his concoction and poked some more. A faint puff transpired and lingered with a less than comforting smell. John revealed his distaste through a blink and resisted the urge to shift in his seat the way he was prone to when Sherlock was in a trying mood.

Sherlock sighed loudly. Ruffled papers adorning nearby desktops. Knocked an ankle against the leg of his coffee table. Sighed again.

“ _If_ you are so bored,” John said from overtop his newspaper, for about the seventieth time. Sherlock huffed. “Why don’t you take one of the many, many cases coming to our doorstep?”

Sherlock rolled his head upon his shoulders in revulsion, testy mood evident.

“They’re _boring_ , John.” He sent the doctor his characteristic _Do you even listen to me_ glance and John promptly responded with his _Did you say something_ face. “Logic dictates that it is a ghastly idea for me to work a mystery requiring less thought ability than a mouse is capable of, particularly while out of my mind. Even you must be able to see that. You’re the one always going on about _social niceties_.” His tone was irritable and that of a child.

Without so much as a warning, Sherlock leaped over the coffee table and slammed down in front in front of John, books and papers flying. John did not even startle. He was thoroughly used to Sherlock’s antics when _bored_.

“Just terrible, isn’t it,” John said, vaguely reprimanding, “that the calibre of people’s tragedies are not to your standard.”

“Entirely inconsiderate,” Sherlock agreed without a hint of irony, and John supressed a sigh. Sherlock looked around the room once; quick, careful snapping gaze. John peered at him from over-top his newspaper.

“What?” he asked.

“I want one. Give me one.”

John pressed his lips together. “Absolutely not, Sherlock. There even aren’t any here.”

Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “Of course there are, you always make sure at least two are left within your possession- oh don’t give me that look, I’ve known for months. _Give_ me one.”

“You are not,” John said carefully, ignoring the tone Sherlock had taken up with him, “having a cigarette. You simply need to occupy yourself.”

“With what?” Sherlock threw up his hands, knocked over a nearby vial and ignored John’s wince as it clattered onto the carpet and spilled its contents everywhere. The beaker containing the jawbone puffed again. “With the mystery of who slept with whom or how many people believe that women dead or why this man killed himself?” The next crash was deliberate. “They’re _petty_ , John, crimes that I can solve with less than a sixth of my brain while _asleep_. I am going positively mad.”

John sat calmly. There was an edge to Sherlock’s voice, a legitimate strain just barely audible and underlying his rapid fire argument, and it had John seeing white with worry. He tried to push the alarm aside. “And smoking helps with that, does it?”

“Of course it does. The habitual practice, the chemicals, the addiction- are you or are you not a doctor?”

John ignored that. “No, Sherlock. You’ve been clean for over a month.”

Sherlock huffed and flounced down into his armchair opposite John, twisted onto his side and curled his robe tighter around him. “Indeed, dear friend, and what great _fun_ it has been.”

John shifted but didn’t say anything more, doing his best to ignore Sherlock’s jittered stare as he attempted to find a case that would interest the detective in the dreary print before him. Certain titles jumped out – _The Monster of Brixton Street_ or _My House Speaks at Night_ – but John had almost exclusively learned the feel of something that Sherlock would solve without even having read the story, and avoided them accordingly.

“You’re not going to find anything,” Sherlock said quietly after a while. John peered at him.

“And why is that?”

“Oh, the beloved city of London has been struck with an apparent dry-spell of criminal activity. Even my homeless network has naught to tell of. It’s all dreadfully… cheerful.” He swept upright with a bitter expression and palmed at his nearby violin bow. “Mycroft will be thrilled.”

John rubbed a hand over his eyes, kept the lids closed with his fingers pressed upon them. He wondered whether the quarrel was worth the headache, knew the answer was no, and went for it anyway. “Sherlock,” he said, his voice forceful, “you _are_ aware that a lack of burglaries, beatings and murders is a good thing, yes?”

Sherlock made an indifferent noise. “Good for the good, I suppose.”

“So we aren’t good now?”

It was a challenge. Sherlock met John’s steadfast gaze head on and was silent.

He blinked once, twice, and John pursed his lips, prepared to wait this out and then decode whatever encrypted response he received. The silence stretched on. Finally Sherlock whipped his bow up through the air, drew his violin his shoulder. He took a breath and spoke in measured beats.

“Should the rate of killings spike tomorrow you would fight the perpetrator with me; should they lower still you would sit content, as you do now. It is such complacency inhabiting the minds of normal folk that encourages foolish actions and absurd concepts, such as the bravery it takes to chase a murderer through a Londonback-alley or hunt down a madman’s dwellings.” Sherlock looked from John to the fireplace, trained his gaze steady. “And such whimsical notions as loyalty to an insufferable man.”

He paused. “You are as good as they come, Doctor John Watson.”

John was baffled. Such expressions of fondness were an extreme rarity from Sherlock; during one of his episodes wherein he had no cases and became almost intolerable, they had _never_ occurred.

John watched Sherlock without a word, and if he felt a little hazy then he was dutifully ignoring it. Sherlock’s mannerisms were such that when the man handed out even double edged compliments, John could barely stop himself from glowing like a praised child.

“And you?” he asked, to which Sherlock had no visible reaction. John swallowed roughly against nothing, feeling odd. “What are you?”

Sherlock surrendered a sigh, scraped his bow across the violin strings absently and tilted his head at the resulting whispered scratches.

“I am on the side of the angels,” Sherlock said, and then John passed out.

Sherlock stood. He took his companion’s pulse and smiled, briefly, before sitting John up properly and leaving a glass of liquid with a thick consistency at his side. He changed from pyjamas and his robe to his usual attire at his leisure and took John’s pulse one more time before leaving 221B Baker Street and heading out into the evening.

*

John awoke with a splitting headache.

Sunlight slanted through the window and at a guess it was five o’clock, possibly six. He coughed into his hand and shook his head, his disorientation such that he nearly tumbled from his seat with the movement. There was bile in his throat and the taste of flattened coins on his tongue.

 _Water_ , he thought, and lunged for the glass next to him.

He downed it in three gulps, upon which the jagged edges in his mind instantly smoothed over and his throat was coated in warmth. It was smooth and thick, like beaten cream or custard, and tasted as sweet as either. His brow furrowed and he coughed another few times, but that was it – he appeared to be totally fine, despite the hangover-esque hell he’d been experiencing moments before.

Sherlock. Sherlock had done this. That bastard.

John tested his legs with hesitance, movements gaining gusto when his head stayed clear and his limbs appeared to be functioning normally, supporting him like usual. The old wound in his hip gave a petulant twinge, his shoulder groaned like the complaints of the elderly, but otherwise he seemed fine.

John thought for a moment. The last thing he remembered was Sherlock confessing his allegiance… to the side of the angels. Whatever the hell that meant. Christ, such an ingenious, complex man, and yet he was so fatally childish and petty at times.

John felt uncharitable and closed his eyes, figuring he had been drugged somehow during their evening… and with anyone else in the whole world would be a wild accusation, but Sherlock Holmes was truly a ridiculous man who  _drugged_ his friends regularly enough that it was a safe assumption. Which was unbelievable, just absolutely _rude_. John didn’t know why he kept expecting Sherlock to change.

Then it struck him. There was only one reason Sherlock would knock John out during a time like this, during this so called criminal dry-spell. Sherlock had said it himself, though of course, John had missed it.

John had missed it.

John’s stomach hit the floor. He scrambled for his jacket, his phone, his wallet and then he was flying down the stairs of their apartment and out into the night, phone pressed to his ear and his best friend on speed dial.

It rang out.

*

Sherlock had known affection would throw John off for the briefest of moments.

The distraction had allowed him to tip a singular drop of his homemade compound into the beaker to his left, releasing the sleeping gas he had created a few days previous. Having drunk the antidote minutes beforehand, from a tiny vial contained within an inlayed pocket of his left sleeve, Sherlock was not affected and the doctor had fallen asleep within thirty seconds of the initial inhalation.

Sherlock’s hands shook. He could barely see, the dim lighting in this disastrous house so poor that his hands clattered over several pebbles of worn gravel before clasping around the glass vial. He screwed it into the needle top and placed it back on the ground, tightened the scarf around his bicep. A small bead of blood oozed from the tiniest puncture mark in the crook of his elbow, bruises already forming around it from five minutes ago.

A wave crushed through him, rising up, rising everything up into a crystallite and painfully bright world where even the dullest of rooms held magnificent features and the visceral ache in his mind that craved stimulus was, for the moment, bearable.

He rose above and above and above, until not even the clouds could touch him.

And then he fell back down.

Sherlock lowered his head. He didn’t need this. He was a world famous detective. He wasn’t this small creature. His investigative partner and dearest friend did his all to prevent this. He _knew_ he didn’t need this.

Sherlock picked up the syringe.

*

John was frantic.

Mrs. Hudson had seen nothing but Sherlock striding with determination out the front door – for a case, she had thought, and so hadn’t asked him his destination. Anderson was unaware of where Sherlock might have scurried away to in order to indulge in his addiction. Molly had two suggestions; an old house that had been emptied due to fire damage, several streets away from Baker Street, that Sherlock had once mentioned to her in passing, and St. Bart’s laboratory where John had first made Sherlock’s acquaintance. Lestrade proposed the Scotland Yard archives, a place Sherlock often visited to occupy his mind when going without an actual case before him.

All were feasible locations for a wayward detective. John pulled out his mobile as he waved for a cab.

“John,” Mycroft said in greeting upon picking up. John tightened his hand into a fist as a cab roared straight past him. Something in his chest squeezed terribly and he took a breath.

“Mycroft,” John replied urgently, “Sherlock drugged me and now he’s gone. I think, I think this may be-” John couldn’t bring himself to say it.

“A danger night?” Mycroft said after a pause, and John heard the static of his sigh. The brother’s voice was quiet. “Where have you searched?”

“I only woke up twenty minutes ago.” It came out rather brash and John immediately shook himself, sliding into the sleek black cab that had pulled over. “Bart’s hospital,” he said with his hand over the receiver and then back to Mycroft, “I’ve talked with everyone and have a list. Anywhere you know of? I’m headed to the laboratory now.”

Mycroft’s silence sounded more reserved by the minute, and John wondered again about the provocations of their family feud when Mycroft, at least, so obviously cared for his little brother. “You haven’t had any cases for how long now?” Mycroft asked. John suspected he already knew the answer and was simply asking for the sake of social niceties.

“Five and a half weeks, give or take.”

“And what was the topic of conversation before he left?”

John hesitated for the briefest of moments. “Good and evil. Angels and demons.”

Mycroft sighed again, as though John’s answer had confirmed something for him. Not for the first time John cursed his apparent meagre intelligence and the Holmes’ superior ones. “Try the attic of the London Public Library,” Mycroft said.

John frowned. “Won’t it be shut at this hour?”

A chuckle. “This is Sherlock Holmes we are talking about, doctor. Should he want to be hidden, a locked door and mesh wire will not hinder him.”

John nodded. “Right. Okay. Library. I’ll call you with any news.”

“If you do find my dear brother, John,” Mycroft said, sounding awfully sure of himself, “tell him, from me, that the sentiment of others will only go so far.”

“Of course,” John said before he’d even registered the request. The line clicked dead.

The cab scuttled through late hour London traffic and John breathed steadily, in through his nose and out through his mouth, refusing to give into the panic he felt clawing in his gut, scraping and throttling.

“You alrigh’, sir?” the cabbie asked, tilting back slightly. “Your breathing’s gone funny. Is it an asthma thing? My kid’s got that, medication’s ‘ere if you need.”

 John shook his head and smiled, tight-lipped. “Fine, thank you. I’m fine.”

He thought, _medication_ , and then he thought, _drugs_ , and he was most definitely not fine.

A knife had been wrenched into John’s chest during the first danger night he’d ever incurred; the abstruse, heavy stretches of dark moonlit hours, the weighty ball of dread mangling his innards, the whole damn empty night in which Sherlock could have been anywhere doing anything without anyone else’s knowledge.

With each possible infraction to Sherlock’s being clean ever since that first night, the dagger had twisted a little further, fetching up against organs and bones and surely going to pierce something of worth any day now.

 _Christ, Sherlock_ , John thought. _What are you doing to yourself?_

*

By Sherlock’s calculations, the room he was in had bared witness to no less than three murders. One before the arson incident, two after. This was shown by a combination of stains in the doorway, the positioning of the furniture and by some measure of luck, his particular position on the floor; stomach down, head to the side to breathe and legs drawn up. A rock had been digging into his right cheek for such an extent of time that he was now ceasing to feel its sting.

Sherlock’s arms ached (for more, for less). His mind had been flayed out on display to the heavens, coal crushed to diamonds, and then skewered down to its primal self, down to the dreaded lizard brain that cried and begged and screamed, _Please, for the love of anything good, stop thinking! Just for one minute. One moment of quiet._

His muscles felt made of brittle wood, his mouth empty and sour. Time was meaningless, a social construction designed to confine the unconfinable and distraught the content. Breathing was a necessity and a nuisance. His limbs were dead weight, detached, floating, falling. He could feel every millilitre of blood gushing through his veins and the effortless glide of his body being washed under.

He’d waited too long. Delayed gratification was certainly an excellent skill to have mastered, and Sherlock Holmes had done so many years ago. Hence he needn’t exercise restraint in this field. Why feel like a king when he could feel like a god?

He pushed into a sitting position, leaning heavily on the wall behind him and muscles in the back of his neck trembling with the effort to keep his head upright. A faint trickle on his cheek drew his attention and Sherlock touched it with a distant hand, found a smear of red. He blinked. Thought hard and fast of how quickly he had dwindled down to here and turned his face away from the blood on his fingertips.

Sherlock knew enough to know that this wasn’t the real him. When reduced down and down and down, this primitive being was not what people would find, this basic tetrapod existence, this… _dependency_. He was more than this.

Sherlock’s fingers left a red mark on his arm as he retied the scarf, the inside of his elbow decorated with three small holes.

*

The hospital was a bust, as was the library, the latter of which actually bore marks of Sherlock but none recent enough to justify a thorough search further into the building. There were only so many laws John was comfortable with breaking for Sherlock Holmes. It was now midnight. He called Mycroft as he was leaving the building.

“How is he?” Mycroft asked promptly and guilt shot through John, even as instantaneous anger rallied against it. If he was going to feel guilt about this occurrence and his inability to remedy it, it would be on his own terms, not because of chastising from his friend’s older brother.

“I don’t know,” John said, halfway sharp, “I haven’t found him. You know, Mycroft, it wouldn’t kill you to send out a few of your people to help me search.”

There was quiet. A cold frisson shivered its way over the back of John’s neck as he abruptly recalled how powerful the man he was talking to.

“Sorry,” John said, just as Mycroft sighed.

“Some days, it is a tribulation to convince the powers that be that my little brother is worth his trouble. I assure you, John; if informing those that could help us about Sherlock’s current condition would actually _improve_ the situation, it would have been done before you awoke.” He paused. The static of his head tilting in thought sounded. “When we first met, I told you I worry about Sherlock constantly.”

John flagged down a cab and gave the address of the abandoned house, the last place he had to search, to the cabbie.

“I remember,” John said carefully.

Mycroft’s tone was cautious. “I would hope that the same burden has not overcome you.”

“Are you trying to tell me to stop looking?”

“I am telling you that _Sherlock_ is the one who put you to sleep,” Mycroft said sharply, suddenly impatient. “He has not been kidnapped, nor has he run off to slay a dragon on his lonesome. He wants to be hidden so he can embrace his demons, his addiction.” John bit down on his tongue, fearful he might say something entirely regrettable. No one spoke for a moment, until, “When Sherlock does these things, takes these precautions of his own incentive, is when we fools should be worried most… and when it will be hardest to find him.”

“Then _help_ _me_ ,” John said, unable to keep the edge from his voice, the kneading tension that had been working its way toward this moment so that when John needed his voice most, it exploded out of him and then faltered entirely. He cleared his throat once, repeated coarsely, “Help me.”

Mycroft sighed. “I am, my dear man. Go back to your apartment. Wait the night out and you will find that Sherlock returns in due time. I will keep post; Sherlock is not the only one with spies on the streets.”

“You can’t expect me to-” John started but Mycroft made a curt noise and cut right over him.

“I _do_ expect you to. Do you not understand? Sherlock doesn’t _want_ to be found. Even out of his mind on whatever terrible drug he uses, you will not be able to find him.” John closed his eyes. “You are never bored with Sherlock, John, but Sherlock is bored with everything.”

Which was pretty fatalistic of Mycroft to say and for John to hear. The knife found its way to John’s lung, sickened him completely as he attempted a new breath and tasted phantom blood on his tongue.

John shook his head, a tiny movement, unable to help himself. “I can’t just let him…” He didn’t know what more to say, and Mycroft sighed again.

“I am not telling you to not worry; I am simply attempting to ease your guilt some. Try stopping the unstoppable.” There was an apology in his voice.

John had never heard Mycroft talk about Sherlock with such… praise, albeit of that ridiculous kind that wove webs around John’s head as he tried to make sense of all its implications; he was not so overwhelmed as to not recognise that calling Sherlock unstoppable was, in some ways, a compliment. Despite their rivalry, the Holmes brothers had more in common than they liked to admit.

“I…”

The cab had stopped. John signalled to the driver that he needed a moment more.

“Don’t you want Sherlock found, and helped?” John asked finally. He couldn’t keep the confusion from his voice and he cursed himself for it.

Mycroft cleared his throat and John could hear static as he rearranged himself on the other end of the line, as though straightening up and assuming a formal position.

“For the sake of England, do not grow weary of my brother, Dr Watson,” he said, business-like, and John realised Mycroft had almost come close to sharing brotherly _feelings_ with him. He would have laughed had the situation not been so bleak.

“You say that, yet also that I should just sit around and wait for him to come down from his high?”

“Yes. It would appear so.” John imagined he could almost hear regret in Mycroft’s voice. Mycroft hung up.

John cursed and shoved his phone away, paid the cabbie with an apology for taking up his time and stepped out in front of the building. It was two stories high, desolate and uninhibited entirely. It looked exactly like the place a drug addict would hole up.

However, John only had to go so far as the front door. A note was pinned to the rusted knocker.

_John,_

_For you to have reached this area is wholly expected, but still, I am very close to being touched at your concern. Leave me be, friend, and I shall return to you when I am ready. Mycroft has experience in this particular field_.

_SH_

John read it once, twice, and then one more time. He noted the careful wording. There was not a thank you in sight. There was not an apology. Sherlock couldn’t even bring himself to write the sentence ‘Mycroft is right’. John nodded to himself and balled the note up in his fist, shoved it in his pocket next to his phone.

Without warning he slammed a fist against the door, over and over until it rattled on its hinges and something in its depths cracked and then finally the tender skin on the side of his palm split. He thought of the great man he knew, drugged up out of his mind simply to escape that relentless restless emptiness that everyone else in the world just dealt with, somehow.

With laboured breaths and an aching hand John found his phone again, jammed speed-dial number one. It went straight to voice mail.

“This is _excellent_ ,” John hissed into the receiver, his voice exploding at random intervals, flensing and then deflating with deceptive strength and his thoughts hideously on display, as they always were to Sherlock. “Just excellent. You win. You _win_! Okay, Sherlock, you and Mycroft and your little game. You want to destroy yourself, go ahead. I’ll be at our apartment so you can come back and act like this all never happened, and that will be fine. For the record, I’m pissed that you drugging me. Just sneak out like a normal human being next time.”

He stopped. The message waited on, the cut-off length strangely distant. He squeezed his eyes shut and saw Sherlock’s body sprawled on the dusted ground of some drug-den, his eyes wide, his elbows dark, his veins fried, his lungs breathless. A cold vice-like hand closed in John’s chest and he had a difficult time drawing his next breath.

“This has got to be,” he said quietly, voice hoarse, “one of the stupidest things you do. Period. Sherlock, I, I’ll take terrorists and mass murderers and arch nemeses and your ridiculous sibling rivalry, but this-”

John’s voice failed him and he couldn’t say anymore. He hung up and marched back toward the road and held out his hand for a cab. Blood dripped onto his wrist.

*

Sherlock watched John from the top story window. He’d known the note would work, and that John wouldn’t come prying upon reading it.

John was beating the front door. His cheeks were flushed and then he was yelling into his phone, snippets slipping inside to Sherlock’s heightened hearing and causing him to flinch ever so slightly. The yelling turned to pleading, pleading to resigned whispers. John’s face flattened out, his expression that of someone who had just had something irreparable inside of him sliced at. His hand was bleeding. John hung up.

Sherlock felt something in his chest contract and he glanced instinctively toward the well-used syringe, though he knew the sensation had nothing to do with the drugs.

John got in a cab and left, Sherlock staring after him.

With numb fingers Sherlock found his phone and listened to the message his companion had left, pressing his palm to his stomach when he thought he might throw up. So John had spoken with Mycroft; of course. Figured. There was nothing to be done.

Sherlock sat down with his back against the wall again and pressed his spidery fingertips to his temples, kneading them carefully. Seven hours ago he was among gods. Four hours, royalty. Now, he was alone in a stinking, empty house, willing himself sober and presentable. He needed a case. He needed to be occupied. He needed work.

Sherlock thumbed at his phone and opened a message to John, sat staring blankly at the screen for an undetermined amount of time as an after wash of narcotics took his brain.

He resurfaced. Typed _I’m sorry_ before keying it backward, reiterating. _Forgive me_ , he typed instead, and pressed send. Sherlock knew when John mouthed the words that they would taste bitter, and wished for his forgiveness all the more.

Sherlock’s phone lit up with an incoming call from the other of the two people in his contacts list. He answered it.

“You’re alive,” Mycroft said, without surprise, without relief.

“You’re monitoring my phone activity,” Sherlock replied. “I shall have to get a new one.”

“Do you really think the Secret Service so pitiful as to be derailed by a new mobile number?”

“They have been stumped by a lot less. Nice to know they’re up to date with my business, however.” Sherlock took a breath silently and tried to see past the red; his brother infuriated him at the best of times. Calling him now was undoubtedly a test. “Is this a brotherly call of concern for my well-being?” There was a faint scoff. Sherlock nodded. “Well then, if that’s all I’ll be off-”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft said.

“I have some resting to do before I return to Baker Street-”

“Sherlock,” Mycroft persisted.

“ _What_?” Sherlock snapped, aggrieved. He waited and could barely contain his loathing. How did his dear brother come across as condescending through silence?

“I told you,” Mycroft said finally. “I warned you not to get involved.”

“I’m not-” Sherlock began but Mycroft was still speaking.

“I am not saying this for your sake anymore, brother mine. That doctor friend of yours is under stresses worse than your addiction and I know he… _means_ something to you.” The expression sounded foreign rolling off of Mycroft’s tongue. “I expect you to act accordingly.”

Sherlock paused. Why on earth would Mycroft want that? It was hardly like him to concern himself with the trivial actions of feelings and relationships – unless, of course, it directly affected him somehow.

Sherlock smiled.

When Sherlock disappeared and used, John worried. John _hurt_. When John was hurt and worried, Sherlock, well, Sherlock acted accordingly. And when Sherlock was emotionally affected by something… it appeared Mycroft lost his game just enough to reveal a singular, thin crack in his ice.

“Of course,” Sherlock said, suave as ever. He didn’t let on what he knew, which of course made him instantly suspect that Mycroft was, at the very least, suspecting it. “I’m heading back to Baker Street in an hour or so. You’re welcome to join John and me.”

Sherlock could hear Mycroft’s distaste and grinned. “Charmed, little brother, as always. I assume from the text that John didn’t find you, after all?”

“He found me,” Sherlock said, just for the sake of contradicting his brother.

“But you didn’t exchange words. Pity, I gave him a message for you.”

Sherlock sighed. “You could deliver it yourself, brother mine; wouldn’t that be a wonder?”

“You are extremely cavalier at the moment, for a man with a drug problem,” Mycroft said, his voice low. Sherlock flinched imperceptibly and was certain that Mycroft was aware of it. “Sherlock, his loyalty will only go so far. What will you do then?”

Sherlock decided not to allow that question to poison his mind.

“You’ve shown your hand quite enough for one conversation, don’t you think, Mycroft?” Sherlock said. When he didn’t respond Sherlock added, in a smaller voice, “I shall continue as I have, I imagine.”

“Find a new one?”

“John is not a goldfish,” Sherlock snapped without thinking. “He is my friend, Mycroft, and as I understand things you already respect that, so back off.”

There was quiet.

“Yes,” Mycroft said eventually, “quite enough hand-showing for the day. I expect I’ll be seeing you, little brother. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Sherlock said and stowed his phone away.

How peculiar that Mycroft should reveal his brotherly agenda through something as simple as Sherlock’s best friend. Sherlock filed the information carefully away for possible future use, and smiled just the tiniest bit.

It was now four AM and though Sherlock held little belief that he would actually be able to sleep, he still balled up his scarf into a makeshift pillow and contented himself against the filthy wall of the run down house. If he returned to Baker Street still coming down and entirely frazzled from lack of sleep, he thought that John might actually hit him. Besides, the hour was ungodly. He set his plans for at least an hour and a half’s time into the future and ignored the urge to rub at his arm.

Sherlock closed his eyes and at least _pretended_ he was asleep, as his mind whirred and galloped in high wire technicolour focus.

*

John had bandaged his hand.

It was the first thing Sherlock noticed about his companion when he entered their apartment, among many; John had slept precisely the same amount of hours Sherlock had (none), his hip was giving him trouble, he’d spoken with Mycroft again and he was sitting in Sherlock’s chair.

“You’re sitting in my chair,” Sherlock said, mostly out of confusion but also partially because John was yet to notice the detective’s arrival. John’s head snapped up and their gazes met until John pushed onto his feet, winced slightly and gripped at his right leg in an unconscious movement.

“Sherlock,” he breathed, reflexively poised in between fight or flee. The name served simultaneously as a greeting and an admonishment and Sherlock bowed his head slightly to acknowledge both parts. The following quiet was blatant and angry and Sherlock felt a growing pressure in his stomach, a hotness on the back of his neck.

Neither of them spoke, until Sherlock said, “Please, do sit down again, John. I wouldn’t want you to further strain your bad leg. I’ll make us tea.”

He moved to the kitchen quickly, anxious to remove himself from the white line of John’s stare for some inexplicable reason, and instantly observed that the clattered countertops had been cleared, his experiments put away or moved aside. Something in his chest ticked.

“My leg,” John repeated, unsurprised. Sherlock turned his back and began boiling the kettle.

“Obviously. As well as your sleep deprivation and my brother. I hope he hasn’t given you too much trouble.”

“ _He_ hasn’t given me- Sherlock, you have some bloody nerve, you do,” John said. His voice was rising rapidly. “Your brother, damn him, has probably been the saving grace of me! If it weren’t for him I would have scoured the streets all _night_ looking-”

His voice fell.

“Looking for me?” Sherlock suggested, turning around, and John gave him a sharp look.

“Or your body.”

Sherlock blinked. He hadn’t, seriously, considered that as a reality for his friend.

“I am hardly that careless,” Sherlock said after a pause and resumed making the hot drinks. John scoffed.

“I think you need to look up the definition of careless, Sherlock.”

Sherlock shrugged. He carried the two teas over on saucers and placed them on the tables respective to each man’s chair. He took his seat. Crossed his legs. Met John’s stare.

“So?” he asked.

“So, what?” John asked.

“Mycroft. What did he say to you?” Sherlock pressed his hands together. John looked annoyed and pained.

“He said addicts will be addicts,” John said shortly, looking to sting, “and that’s it.” Sherlock showed no inclination to show that his blow had landed.

John was lying. How curiously the only two people Sherlock had spoken to in the last twenty-four hours were treating him. Perhaps this was the effect of drug use.

Sherlock blew on his tea and then sipped at it.

“Heartfelt, no doubt,” he said once he’d swallowed. The ensuing silence was deafening.

Sherlock could read John’s every emotion as easily as he could everything else about the man, yet somehow his current ones managed to inflict damage and confusion no less. John shifted in his seat. Sherlock’s brow furrowed as he thought.

“I owe you some sort of an apology,” Sherlock began, and John let out a massive breath, nodding and crossing his arms. Sherlock closed his eyes.

“The thing you have to understand, John, is for me having another individual constantly concerned with my activities and furthermore emotionally affected by them is mostly unprecedented and so I have simply been continuing apace in my deeds, without thoughts for what may manifest…” Sherlock considered John tearing apart London city top to bottom, the plain simple truth that John appeared to _care_ about him, and pressed his lips together. “It has occurred to me on various occasions that perhaps this was not the wisest course of action, for look how it has affected you.”

John waited. “Badly,” Sherlock elaborated as though John was unaware. The detective took a breath and continued.

“It is this particular result for which I shall offer my sincerest apologies, John.” Sherlock inclined forward slightly in his chair and took John’s gaze for ransom. “Truly. Do not write this off. I am bottomless in my regret for the suffering I have caused you, and I hope you will forgive me.”

“You don’t look as though you’ve been shooting up all night,” John said, and Sherlock blinked.

“I’m sorry?”

“You look okay. Not at all close to dead.”

“Yes, well, it’s a gift,” Sherlock said mindlessly and against all odds, if you would believe it, John cracked an inexplicable smile.

“You’ve cut your cheek, though,” John said after wrestling for control of his features. Sherlock smiled.

“And you’ve cut your hand.”

“Hm?” John looked surprised. “Oh, yes, this… just an accident.” They watched each other for a moment and Sherlock knew John was appeased, at least for now. “Have you spoken with your brother, let him know all is… well?”

The word was hesitant. Sherlock figured uncertainty was perhaps John’s right at this point in their relationship, and the thought depressed him.

“He is aware,” Sherlock said, blinking at the unlit fireplace. John sipped from his tea.

“Good.” Sherlock nodded. “Very good. And, uh, thank you. For your apology. Though don’t think that I missed _what_ , exactly, you apologised for.”

John wasn’t meeting Sherlock’s stare and Sherlock sighed. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You know,” John said quickly, as though getting something off his chest, “I think Mycroft cares very deeply for you, Sherlock. You’re an entirely unreasonable man, and a dickhead most of the time to top it off, but you’ve won the allegiance of your brother. And myself. And a few others.”

It went unspoken; _Greg Lestrade. Mrs. Hudson. Molly Hooper._

“The good people, I suppose,” John said quietly. “Angels.”

“I am very fortunate,” Sherlock said after a breath, and John looked at least half stunned at the admission.

“Is it crazy to say that someone like Mycroft cares about you? If he cares about anything at all, anyway.” John swallowed, drank more tea with forcibly steady hands. “It would be you, Sherlock, if he cares at all.”

“I think he harbours a touch of softness for you, too,” Sherlock said and John laughed immediately, already shaking his head.

“No he doesn’t. If I’m to be anything to Mycroft, it’s an asset of his detective brother.”

“He does,” Sherlock said, ignoring John.

“He does not, that’s crazy.”

“Only as crazy as a Detective Inspector, landlady, pathologist, and doctor caring about an unreasonable dickhead of a man.” Sherlock allowed himself a brief smile. John chuckled once, a breath of acknowledgement. He smiled.

“Well, yes,” John said, “I suppose you’re quite right.”

There was a quick rapping on their door and Mrs. Hudson poked her head in, smiled at the sight of John and Sherlock perched in their usual chairs. She gestured a bit out in the hallway and a young woman eventually entered the apartment, tentative. She met the men’s stares with a shy smile.

“Client,” Mrs. Hudson mock whispered and Sherlock nodded, waved for the girl to come further into the room. Mrs. Hudson smiled and left. Sherlock turned back to John briefly.

“Well then, friend. Back to the game it would seem.” John grinned.

“Of course.” He turned to the client, still smiling. “Come in, what’s your name?”

“Angeline,” she said, somewhat reluctant and taking the seat John had gotten up to pull out for her. “I heard you could help me, Mr. Holmes, Dr Watson.”

Sherlock leaned forward and pressed his palms together, holding his fingers at his chin. “Possibly. Tell us the issue and for the love of god, _don’t_ be boring.”

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a fic that could seem feasible within the actual show and also explored the facets of John, Mycroft and Sherlock’s relationships with each other. The way the three interact seriously interests me.


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